In the Limelight - First Baptist of Ivy Gap

Graham Dixon

Published 10:31 am, Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Men go to wars, and the women are left behind. Sometimes the men come home, and sometimes they do not. When they do not the women are left with questions, secrets and doubts that may be hidden for years but inevitably reveal themselves. "First Baptist of Ivy Gap," running through Sept. 30 at the Permian Playhouse, explores the relationships between six women in the last year of WWII and in 1970, during the Vietnam War.

At two and a half hours, this production runs at a rather glacial pace, and only becomes more energized in two scenes in the second half. Most of the rest of the time, the lack of action or plot development — the six women wrap bandages for soldiers and talk — is problematic.

The actresses try gamely, and each has their moments. Devie Russell has the deepest and most challenging role as Luby, the mother of a teenage Marine who dies. Her sense of frozen foreboding in the Act I is well-presented, and her equally unchanging grief 25 years later is believable. At times her words become lost within her crying and they are difficult to comprehend.

As her young antagonist, Kirsten Geddes, is often excellent as the young girl in love who returns as a worried mother in the Vietnam war. Geddes is often believable in this challenging role, although sometimes her physical gestures seem planned rather than spontaneous.

April Van Houten plays the snobbish, often malevolent Vera Reynolds with an intense gusto. She succeeds in humanizing an essentially non-sympathetic character, and we believe the vulnerability she reveals at the end. The certainty with which she states that "God does not laugh" is as chilling as it is funny. Her worst dream is the rebellious Mae Ellen, the church organist with dreams of leaving the small town -- and of course never will. Tammy Underwood plays this character as an overgrown teenager — impossible but lovable.

The pastor's irrepressible wife Edith is played excellently by D'Alice Belanger. She is happy in the 1970 scenes, but like many people entering old age, a slight melancholy pervades her character as she wonders what might have been.

The cast is round out by Paula Waldrop as Olene Wiffler, the one character who actually succeeds in leaving Ivy Gap. While this actress is far older than Wiffler, making her first act dreams a little odd, it works in the 1970 scenes. She is believable as the rather sleazy but golden-hearted ex-Vegas dancer who has made good.

First-time director Joan Soehnlein shows her inexperience in rather static blocking, but some of the subtler interrelationships between the women obviously have received a lot of work. This comes to fruition in the only scene to take place outside of the church, as Luby and Sammy face off over decades of resentments revolving around the dead Marine.

Is a mother's love greater than a potential wife's?

The question is never fully resolved, and the end of "First Baptist of Ivy Gap" descends into a less than credible resolution of past conflicts into unified empathy and love.

The decision to use the whole stage — a massive yellow and brown wall spreads from wing to wing broken only by steps up to the sanctuary — took away from the intimate intensity that is surely intended by the playwright. The actresses often were remote from one another rather than claustrophobically entangled.